Still Life by Luc Tuymans, 2002, oil on canvas (3.47 x 5m)

After years of turning its nose up at painting, the Saatchi collection has come up with a series of exhibitions in London called "The Triumph of Painting" at the Duke of York HQ Building that started in January 2005 and should go on well into 2007. Given the past artistic activities of the promoters, the sheer grandiloquence of the title is not devoid of irony, though sadly it's lost on them. With such a title, it can be said quite confidently that the show's curators are not afraid to make a statement. What about the artists? What about the paintings? Does the show deliver on its triumphant promise?

The most striking thing about the works exhibited-except for the notable exception of the work of Kai Althof, the better painter of the show-is their considerable dimensions. Luc Tuysman's apples (and potato?) reach 3.45 by 5 meters (137 by 197 inches); Hermann Nitsch seldom paints canvases smaller than 2 by 3 meters (79 by 118 inches); Daniel Richter's smallest painting is 2.83 by 2.32 meters (111 by 91 inches); Jonathan Meese's basquiatesque "Temptation …" (the title is as long as the painting) covers a surface of 3.70 by 10 meters (146 by 394 inches) and the list could go on. Though it might sound a bit "Alan Greenspanish," and therefore out of place, "The Inflation of Painting" would clearly have been a better name for this painterly marathon.

If, as the title of this show would have us believe in all its glorious-dare I say triumphant-immodesty, this exhibition represents the official get-together of today's painting nomenklatura, the question of size becomes relevant. Is, in painting at least, bigger better?

The Temptation Of The State Of The Blessed Ones In "Archland" by Jonathan Meese, 2003 oil on canvas (3.7m x 10m)

One could reasonably argue that given the size of rooms of this particular venue-as grand as the title-the artists had a unique opportunity to paint very larges canvases or that large paintings had been chosen for the show. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it seems that nowadays no artist of (financial) relevance paints small canvases. By and large, contemporary painters who command great prices produce large works. In fact, the causal relationship between price and size is easier to ascertain than the relationship between price and talent or, for that matter, between size and talent. The fact that today the great majority of urban dwellers seldom have the room to hang a piece measuring a "mere" 2 by 2 meters (79 by 79 inches) goes to show that art is not produced for them. It would point to the fact that it is produced either for museums and/or for the happy few with deep pockets and equally ample walls.

The production of sizable works is so systematic among financially successful painters today that there is little or no doubt that large works are produced to fetch considerable sums of money and to present themselves as "important." Leaf through any auction catalogue and you will see that "important" is a favorite word among uninspired scribblers describing deliriously expensive lots. In all fairness to them, when you look at what is deemed "important" you feel some empathy for the lack of inspiration of the associates in charge of writing the blurbs. The large size of the works then becomes a play on words that reads "important" and translates into mind-bogglingly expensive. We are left wondering what talent has to do with it a lot of the time.

Between its large canvases and its campy title, "The Triumph of Painting" establishes all these relationships very convincingly. This was probably not the intention, but it is certainly the result. If anything, it does become emblematic of how the public is bamboozled into believing that what art professionals say matters in the art world. It's too bad that art exhibits, unlike presidential elections, don't have exit polls. It would be interesting to learn whether upon leaving the show people think what they are "supposed" to think.

Of all the words that can be ascribed to these mammoth paintings, "monumental" is not one of them. The utter lack of monumentality is, in fact, arresting given the colossal proportions of the paintings. What in fact is "monumental"? Is it related to the size of the work or to the vision the artist conveys of action and/or shape in space? Strangely, monumentality is more in the eye of the beholder than it is in the dimension of the piece. Monumentality is the interpretation the eye of the viewer makes of a particular action/object in space. Conveying monumentality is one of the skills of the great artist. The actual scale does not matter. 

Monumentality requires the illusion of tridimensionality

Monumentality means that the work would sustain enlargement easily, that it conveys vastness but not that it consists of large dimensions. It says something about the inner balance of the proportions of the composition. The majority of the Saatchi paintings have a flatness that ignores light-an essential element of monumentality-a poverty in composition that makes them small in spite of their size. It is hard to believe that the creators of those gigantic paintings did not strive to create monumental works, and yet they are not. 

The conspicuous lack of monumentality of the great majority of these huge canvases must say something about the talent of those artists. Otherwise, is there a point in painting such massive canvases?

The talent required to paint well is clearly not the subject of "The Triumph of Painting." Too little is said these days about the mysterious alchemy of the eye of the painter and his or her hand. Not enough thought is given to what this supernatural pair coupled with an intense inner world and/or an idiosyncratic vision can achieve. No, clearly, "The Triumph of Painting" is not about the magic of painting.

Take Degas, among others. Everyone was fooled at least once, if not repeatedly. Degas drew many small pieces. You see a Degas pastel reproduced in a book: a theater, singers on stage, their faces bathed in a white light, the public cheering in the foreground, men in top hats and all. It is full of action, it is full of people. It has to be big. And when you go to Lyon to see the real thing, you will probably miss it at first-it measures 27 by 37cm (10 3/4 by 14 3/4 inches). It is so small! The first reaction is one of disappointment, but then, reflecting on it, what led you to believe this was a huge work? Not the little reproduction that caught your eye in the book, surely.

Cantante De Café-Concierto by Edgar Degas (53 x 41cm)

En El Café-Concierto "Les Ambassedeurs", by Edgar Degas (37 x 27cm)

No-it was the sense of space. Degas's disappointingly small pastels are a monumental demonstration that space has no dimension but somehow defines it.

Degas takes us to the edge of the paradox and lets us have a glimpse at it. For a brief moment we understood something crucial about space, about physics maybe, about the essence of art, and then it's gone. The titillation remains, with the tip of our finger we have briefly touched the mystery. Degas has made us aware of it.

The other artist who comes to mind when reflecting upon monumentality is Henry Moore. Henry Moore did not sculpt big pieces. He sent tiny little waxes to his foundry, where they were enlarged to become the sculptures we know. He conceived them large but made them small. He did not need to make the model big to understand how the final result would inhabit space, prove its reality, become a statement about its impalpable yet inescapable existence. He proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that for us living creatures there is no space without the presence of matter, the same way there is no day without night, no god without the devil, no black without white. His sculptures unfold majestically in space and make it tangible. They capture it authoritatively. They become it. It becomes them. 

"The Triumph of Painting" won't elicit such musings. The self-importance of the title is an adequate opening theme to this visual cacophony. The large size of most of the works is the most impressive feature of this show, and it leaves us wondering whether these artists are left to make noise because they can't make music. 

Most of the show can be seen at www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk  or in the catalogue for "The Triumph of Painting," published by Jonathan Cape, London.

Gail Lusby was a dealer of modern art in Paris and New York City until she came back to SMA in January 2002, upon inheriting her parents' house in town. Since then she has been a collector of emerging Latin American artists, as well as the curator of several South American collections. She is the daughter of the late Chantal and Dick Lusby, who were both well-respected artists and beloved residents of San Miguel as early as 1973.

Design potential of the human figure
By Henry Vermillion

"We feel really fortunate to have an artist of his level join us." That comment by Mike Kleimo sums up the reaction of Galería Izamal artists to the news that Jaime Goded will be showing his work at the gallery.

Jaime Goded is a multifaceted artist. Sanmiguelenses and visitors know him best through the work they have seen in his "Ono" stores in San Miguel: drawings, brightly colored wooden toys and puzzles for children, cut-out sculptures and even smartly designed cabinets and furniture. I myself remember being amazed by the drawings that I saw in 1992 in his gallery in the rear of the Meson de San José in San Miguel. We had only recently opened Galería Izamal in a small adjacent space. The drawings-in pen and ink, some only two or three inches in size-were elegant, extravagant and endlessly inventive. At about that time, he had begun designing the wooden sculptures and toys for which he is so widely known.

Goded was born in 1945 in Mexico City. He studied filmmaking in Prague, sociology in Mexico City and media studies in Paris, and for over 15 years he taught film and mass communication at the university level. He has lived and worked in San Miguel since 1983 and has had more than 20 one-man shows in Mexico and other countries.

The central axis of his art is the human figure, and most especially the female figure. He is not afraid to take the figure apart and reassemble it in strange and wonderful ways. He transforms the figure (and all of nature), rather than merely representing it in an accurate and elegant way, as most artists do. He's interested in the design potential of the figure (and of birds, dogs and other animals) rather than in individual personalities. In this he is a modernist in the line of Miro, Klee and, in Mexico, José Louis Cuevas. His work does not, however, have the dark tone of Cuevas, nor does Cuevas ever attempt colors like those of Jaime Goded. The kinship is in the inexhaustible fascination of both artists with the infinite permutations possible in the human figure. Cuevas' figures, as I said, are darker, more melancholy; Goded's are more exuberant, but no less inventive.

Galería Izamal's arrangement with Goded is for an initial period of three months. He will show drawings, paintings and sculpture.

As usual, new work of Izamal painters Juan Ezcurdia, Mike Kleimo, Marion Perlet, Henry Vermillion, Britt Zaist and jeweler María Bracho will also be on display.

Art Exhibit, works by Jaime Goded
Saturday, April 8, 6-8pm
Galería Izamal, Mesones 80

Organic deviations, art outside the museum

Galería Carlos MuRo hosts a collective exhibit of work by the teachers and students of the Instituto Allende.

Organized by Cristina Llerena, the show includes works in a wide variety of media, including audiovisual pieces.

The exhibit aims to highlight the compromises that artists make to create their work and the connection between art and community.

Art Opening, "Organic Deviations"
Saturday, April 8, 7pm
Galería Carlos MuRo, Zacateros 81A

Gods without religion, shrouds with movement

The Venezuelan artist Andres Michelena, now a Miami resident, presents his first solo exhibit in Mexico. Using a variety of techniques, he shows a series of subtly sarcastic images that form a body of religious rites, orphan entities of gods invented as products of faith.

For centuries religious relics have symbolized and supported faith, justifying the idea of the existence of God, and therefore the existence of faith. 

Michelena uses multimedia boxes to recreate shrouds with movement. Painting the "original" image of a new god in portable shrines, he creates an image of an original that does not have an origin. New gods without religion emerge from the transparency of the colorful and light-filled cubes. 

Michelena also presents us with god as a consumer item, such as a Buddha image on a bar of soap-a beautiful object, but one that ultimately must be consumed. His vision also includes gods passing as food, yet Michelena fills the containers with sarcasm, inviting us to satisfy our souls with the things we can buy.

The artist questions our consumption habits, our rites and the way we look at images. Faith and religion can be used to manipulate, yet Michelena never offers a final dictum-the message is always hidden behind a screen or transparent veil, or within a container. As he evokes more questions, in many ways he furthers the mysteries that lie behind faith.

Art Opening, "Gods Without Religion", works by Andres Michelena 
Saturday, April 15, 7pm
Kunsthaus Santa Fe, Santa Fe 22 a, Colonia Allende